The Red Cross is the symbol of human compassion. It was their pity for the suffering and unaided victims of the battle of Solferino (June 24th, 1859) that moved Henry Dunant and his friends to take the first steps which led to the formation of the International Red Cross Committee in 1863, and to the signature in 1864 of the Geneva Convention, under which the rights of the wounded in wartime were officially recognized. Red Cross Societies have since been formed in nearly every country.

In 1919 on the initiative of Mr. Henry P. Davison, Chairman of the War Council of the American Red Cross, the Red Cross Societies of America, France, Great Britain, Italy and Japan founded the League of Red Cross Societies, with the object of applying the spirit and organization of the Red Cross, in peacetime, to the improvement of public health throughout the world. The permanent Secretariat of the League, established in Geneva in 1919 and transferred to Paris in 1922, is a central office equipped to collect and distribute information bearing on the peacetime work of Red Cross Societies, and to assist them in planning and carrying out their programmes. The Secretariat also acts as the collective representative of the national Societies

belonging to the League, and in this caрасity maintains close co-operative relations with the Health Section of the League of Nations, the Office International d'Hygiène Publique, the International Labour Office, and the more important non-official international health organizations.

The General Council, which is the supreme authority of the League, meets at least once every two years, It comprises delegates from all Red Cross Societies, members of the League. At its second meeting, in 1922, the Council recommended to all Red Cross Societies the adoption of peacetime programmes aimed especially at the development in their several countries of popular health instruction, public health nursing and Junior Red Cross organization. This is the basis upon which Red Cross Societies throughout the world are working to-day.

The Board of Governors of the League meets annually. It consists of representatives of each of the five founder societies, ten nominees of societies designated by the General Council, and the Director-General and Secretary-General. The Board of Governors directs the policy of the League in pursuance of the resolutions of the General Council.

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The attention of the Red Cross Societies of the world will shortly be turned to the Argentine Republic where the First Pan-American Red Cross Conference will meet in Buenos Aires in November.

Apart from the interest thus aroused in Red Cross activities on the South American Continent, there are other striking reasons for a study of the Argentine Red Cross Society. The fact that it has always enjoyed nation-wide support, enabling it to develop a flourishing, peace-time, health programme, demonstrates the futility of the argument, sometimes advanced, that a Red Cross Society can only prosper in a country menaced with the threat of war. The Argentine Red Cross has known no wars, except at the beginning of its existence, yet it has been able to gain the confidence and support

of the people, a confidence and a support which are daily increasing.

The Red Cross Society was founded in Argentine to mitigate the sufferings of the people after the revolution of 1874. A group of men met together in the old National College and laid down the basis of the organization, thus establishing the first national Red Cross Society in South America.

Six years later a governmental decree, read before the troops encamped on the outskirts of what is to-day the capital of the Republic, incorporated the new organization in the group of other national societies, and it obtained the recognition of the International Committee in Geneva (1880). The Peruvian Red Cross Society, founded in 1879, had obtained recognition the same year, and thus

sufferers. It dis

patched three ships loaded with provisions, clothing, medical supplies and money. It also sent large sums to Italy for relief purposes during the Messina earthquake.

During the Balkan wars and the Great European War, the proverbial generosity of the Argentine Red Cross manifested itself by care for the

earlier.

Ever since the Argentine Red Cross was founded, there has been no disaster or epidemic in which it has not intervened in fulfilment of its humanitarian and self-sacrificing mission.

The combatants of 1880 and of 1890 were the first to benefit by the work of its medical units. Then the cholera epidemic, which devastated Tucuman, Mendoza, Salta and Jujuy in 1886, proved that the Argentine Red Cross could act just as effectively far from the battlefields. From that time onwards its motto has been : « In pace et in bello caritas. »

Until 1919, when it laid its peacetime programme before the public on the lines laid down by the Cannes Conference-a conference which marked an epoch in the history of Red Cross Societies in America and which resulted in the present federation of Red Cross Societies and in the foundation of the League-the outstanding activities of the Argentine Red Cross were the services it rendered during the revolutionary period of 1890 to 1893, and, after peace was definitely established, the relief sent to the victims of the Arroyo Seco cyclone, the Rioja earthquake, the 1889 floods, the epidemic of bubonic plague which broke out at Rosario in 1900 and the floods in Santa Fé and Formosa in 1905.

its territory, by faciliting the interchange of information and of money remittances and by giving its patronage to collections organized by foreign residents.

PRESENT ORGANIZATION

The statutes of the Argentine Red Cross were revised in 1920. The first article defines the mission of the Red Cross in peacetime as follows :

To watch over the preservation and improvement of the race, caring for mothers so that our citizens may grow up strong both physically and morally, caring for children so that they may be protected from the diseases which attack them, and mitigating the infirmities of the aged.

In time of epidemics or other national disasters, to lend its aid to avert or attenuate the results. "

Various initiatives taken since then by the Supreme Council have extended the field of activities of the Argentine Red Cross. In a recent speech the President spoke of these activities as follows :

"As soon as the Red Cross ceased to be solely a war organization and extended its activities to times of peace, its programme was enlarged and the effects of its work on society made it an important factor in social progress.

our own Red Cross Society. If we were to content ourselves with establishing schools of nursing, if we limited ourselves to asking for public aid in favour of the suffering, either in peace or in war, we should be accomplishing something exceedingly useful, it is true, but we should not be completely fulfilling the rôle which the Red Cross ought to fill. Our endeavour should be to establish the organization firmly among the people themselves.

"Our activity, therefore, must be continuous and not spasmodic, not just coming into evidence when disaster overtakes us. It should be widespread and unique-widespread because manifesting itself simultaneously through the training of nurses, through propaganda in favour of physical education in order to maintain health, through propaganda against social diseases such as alcoholism and gambling, and against the epidemics which decimate the population such as tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy; unique, because, if organized throughout the whole country, it could develop uniform action and have a truly national character.

"In order to maintain constant co-operation, all the various elements of society must combinerich and poor, employers and employees. They must be encouraged by the public authorities and particularly by state institutions which train the mind of the child, inculcating in him the fundamental principles of human brotherhood which constitute the basis of modern society. " At the head of the Argentine Red Cross stands the Supreme Council, responsible for all international relations and the executive representative of the organization and of its two big affiliated branches, the Men's General Council and the Women's Central

Committee. Depending from the two latter are the provincial committees, established throughout the Republic and they in their turn organize sub-committees among the people.

Dr. Joaquín Llambías, one of the foremost scientists of the Republic, is President of the Supreme Council. After having filled an important political post as Intendant of the City of Buenos Aires, he now devotes himself to his laboratory and to the Red Cross. The Women's Central Committee is presided over by Señorita Elena Moutier, and the Men's General Council by Dr. Raul Ortega Belgrano, an eminent physician whose energy and eloquence have been invaluable to the Red Cross. The senior member of the Council and Secretary General since 1890 is Sr. Pedro P. Lalanne, to whom the international humanitarian movement is much indebted for his devotion to the cause. He is a world authority on all juridical questions relating to the Red Cross.

THE WORK OF THE WOMEN'S CENTRAL COMMITTEE

The women of the Argentine Red Cross have concentrated their efforts on the establishment of